Sheldon smiled tolerantly and proceeded to light a cigarette. But Tudor was not to be turned aside.
«You started this row,» he urged.
«There isn't any row. It takes two to make a row, and I, for one, refuse to have anything to do with such tomfoolery.»
«You started it, I say, and I'll tell you why you started it.»
«I fancy you've been drinking,» Sheldon interposed. «It's the only explanation I can find for your unreasonableness.»
«And I'll tell you why you started it. It wasn't silliness on your part to exaggerate this little trifle of love-making into something serious. I was poaching on your preserves, and you wanted to get rid of me. It was all very nice and snug here, you and the girl, until I came along. And now you're jealous-that's it, jealousy– and want me out of it. But I won't go.»
«Then stay on by all means. I won't quarrel with you about it. Make yourself comfortable. Stay for a year, if you wish.»
«She's not your wife,» Tudor continued, as though the other had not spoken. «A fellow has the right to make love to her unless she's your-well, perhaps it was an error after all, due to ignorance, perfectly excusable, on my part. I might have seen it with half an eye if I'd listened to the gossip on the beach. All Guvutu and Tulagi were laughing about it. I was a fool, and I certainly made the mistake of taking the situation on its assumed innocent face– value.»
So angry was Sheldon becoming that the face and form of the other seemed to vibrate and oscillate before his eyes. Yet outwardly Sheldon was calm and apparently weary of the discussion.
«Please keep her out of the conversation,» he said.
«But why should I?» was the demand. «The pair of you trapped me into making a fool of myself. How was I to know that everything was not all right? You and she acted as if everything were on the square. But my eyes are open now. Why, she played the outraged wife to perfection, slapped the transgressor and fled to you. Pretty good proof of what all the beach has been saying. Partners, eh?-a business partnership? Gammon my eye, that's what it is.»
Then it was that Sheldon struck out, coolly and deliberately, with all the strength of his arm, and Tudor, caught on the jaw, fell sideways, crumpling as he did so and crushing a chair to kindling wood beneath the weight of his falling body. He pulled himself slowly to his feet, but did not offer to rush.
«Now will you fight?» Tudor said grimly.
Sheldon laughed, and for the first time with true spontaneity. The intrinsic ridiculousness of the situation was too much for his sense of humour. He made as if to repeat the blow, but Tudor, white of face, with arms hanging resistlessly at his sides, offered no defence.
«I don't mean a fight with fists,» he said slowly. «I mean to a finish, to the death. You're a good shot with revolver and rifle. So am I. That's the way we'll settle it.»
«You have gone clean mad. You are a lunatic.»
«No, I'm not,» Tudor retorted. «I'm a man in love. And once again I ask you to go outside and settle it, with any weapons you choose.»
Sheldon regarded him for the first time with genuine seriousness, wondering what strange maggots could be gnawing in his brain to drive him to such unusual conduct.
«But men don't act this way in real life,» Sheldon remarked.
«You'll find I'm pretty real before you're done with me. I'm going to kill you to-day.»
«Bosh and nonsense, man.» This time Sheldon had lost his temper over the superficial aspects of the situation. «Bosh and nonsense, that's all it is. Men don't fight duels in the twentieth century. It's-it's antediluvian, I tell you.»
«Speaking of Joan-«
«Please keep her name out of it,» Sheldon warned him.
«I will, if you'll fight.»
Sheldon threw up his arms despairingly.
«Speaking of Joan-«
«Look out,» Sheldon warned again.
«Oh, go ahead, knock me down. But that won't close my mouth. You can knock me down all day, but as fast as I get to my feet I'll speak of Joan again. Now will you fight?»
«Listen to me, Tudor,» Sheldon began, with an effort at decisiveness. «I am not used to taking from men a tithe of what I've already taken from you.»
«You'll take a lot more before the day's out,» was the answer. «I tell you, you simply must fight. I'll give you a fair chance to kill me, but I'll kill you before the day's out. This isn't civilization. It's the Solomon Islands, and a pretty primitive proposition for all that. King Edward and law and order are represented by the Commissioner at Tulagi and an occasional visiting gunboat. And two men and one woman is an equally primitive proposition. We'll settle it in the good old primitive way.»
As Sheldon looked at him the thought came to his mind that after all there might be something in the other's wild adventures over the earth. It required a man of that calibre, a man capable of obtruding a duel into orderly twentieth century life, to find such wild adventures.
«There's only one way to stop me,» Tudor went on. «I can't insult you directly, I know. You are too easy-going, or cowardly, or both, for that. But I can narrate for you the talk of the beach– ah, that grinds you, doesn't it? I can tell you what the beach has to say about you and this young girl running a plantation under a business partnership.»
«Stop!» Sheldon cried, for the other was beginning to vibrate and oscillate before his eyes. «You want a duel. I'll give it to you.» Then his common-sense and dislike for the ridiculous asserted themselves, and he added, «But it's absurd, impossible.»
«Joan and David-partners, eh? Joan and David-partners,» Tudor began to iterate and reiterate in a malicious and scornful chant.
«For heaven's sake keep quiet, and I'll let you have your way,» Sheldon cried. «I never saw a fool so bent on his folly. What kind of a duel shall it be? There are no seconds. What weapons shall we use?»
Immediately Tudor's monkey-like impishness left him, and he was once more the cool, self-possessed man of the world.
«I've often thought that the ideal duel should be somewhat different from the conventional one,» he said. «I've fought several of that sort, you know-«
«French ones,» Sheldon interrupted.
«Call them that. But speaking of this ideal duel, here it is. No seconds, of course, and no onlookers. The two principals alone are necessary. They may use any weapons they please, from revolvers and rifles to machine guns and pompoms. They start a mile apart, and advance on each other, taking advantage of cover, retreating, circling, feinting-anything and everything permissible. In short, the principals shall hunt each other-«
«Like a couple of wild Indians?»
«Precisely,» cried Tudor, delighted. «You've got the idea. And Berande is just the place, and this is just the right time. Miss Lackland will be taking her siesta, and she'll think we are. We've got two hours for it before she wakes. So hurry up and come on. You start out from the Balesuna and I start from the Berande. Those two rivers are the boundaries of the plantation, aren't they? Very well. The field of the duel will be the plantation. Neither principal must go outside its boundaries. Are you satisfied?»
«Quite. But have you any objections if I leave some orders?»
«Not at all,» Tudor acquiesced, the pink of courtesy now that his wish had been granted.
Sheldon clapped his hands, and the running house-boy hurried away to bring back Adamu Adam and Noa Noah.
«Listen,» Sheldon said to them. «This man and me, we have one big fight to-day. Maybe he die. Maybe I die. If he die, all right. If I die, you two look after Missie Lackalanna. You take rifles, and you look after her daytime and night-time. If she want to talk with Mr. Tudor, all right. If she not want to talk, you make him keep away. Savvee?»
They grunted and nodded. They had had much to do with white men, and had learned never to question the strange ways of the strange breed. If these two saw fit to go out and kill each other, that was their business and not the business of the islanders, who took orders from them. They stepped to the gun-rack, and each picked a rifle.
